When New
York-based memoirist Aaron Wilkinson gathers with his high school friends to
marry off two of their own, he is forced to spend a week with Nik, the boy who broke
his heart.

As they settle
into the Texas beach house where the nuptials will be performed, Nik quickly
makes his intentions clear: he wants Aaron back. "He's coming hard,
baby," a friend warns, setting the tone for a week of transition where
Aaron and Nik must decide if they are playing for keeps.

Aaron finishes the song and Stephanie snatches the
mic out of his hand, crooks her finger at Nik and launches them into a reprise
of their performance of "Dancing on My Own" from the homecoming
weekend they all spent here at the house back in senior year. Stephanie still
has questionable rhythm and tragic pitch—she loves to sing, which is why they
have a karaoke machine in this house, but it's one thing she will admit she
doesn't have much of a gift for—but there's a reason Nik majored in music at The
University of Texas, and his voice has come a long way.

Somehow, this deliberate throwback to a memory that
was never anything but happy seems different than what Aaron has just done. He
sits on the sofa, flanked by Alex and Jasmine, hating them both a little for
participating in it even while he smiles. Nik dances—how can you not, with this song—but he still watches
Aaron, gives him a little head-tilt during the chorus, and it's charming and
devastating and infuriating.

Jasmine leans to murmur, "Oh, I see how it
is."

"Oh, shut up."

"You
might not be desperate, but I'm not sure about him. He's coming hard,
baby."

Mila McWarren
grew up in Texas, but has happily made her home on the East Coast for the last
decade. In her day job she works as a social scientist and has spent the last
10 years developing her fiction writing online. She lives with her husband and
their two kids. When she isn't using working, writing, or hanging out with her
family, she likes knitting and watching television, because they go together
like peanut butter and chocolate, two of her other great loves.

Today I’m very lucky to be interviewing Mila
McWarren, author of The Luckiest.

Hi Mila, thank you for agreeing to this
interview. Tell us a little about yourself, your background, and your current
book.

Hi! I'm a married woman, in my 40s, two kids.
I live on the East Coast of the US, where I work as a researcher. This book is
a new adult novel, and it tells the story of two exes trapped in a beachhouse
for a week while they marry off a pair of their closest friends. I'm pretty
sure you can figure out the rest. J This was really fun, thanks!

Wicked Faerie's -What do you find attractive in a man?

Aaron - Kindness. Good
eyes. Capable hands. Strong thighs. Oh, hair – hair is underrated. And good
humor, and patience. But mostly hair and eyes; they can be lethal.

WF -The first thing that went through your
head when you saw Nik?

Aaron - You have to
understand how young we were, first of all. There was no thunderbolt of
attraction, at least nothing I could understand then. Part of it is that the
last few years of high school was very
kind to Nik, and part of it is that I was just not quite ready for him.

He was standing
in a parking lot, off by himself, in a band uniform. His trumpet was dangling
from one hand, and he was looking down at the ground and laughing. I still
don't know what he was laughing at; he doesn't even remember this, because for
him it was just another minute before a marching contest. We didn't actually
meet until months later when we bumped into each other at another school event.

So the first
thing that went through my head when I saw Nik was, "what is that dumbass laughing at?"

It's a moment
for the ages.

WF -Do you think you’ll insist the author
visits you again?

Aaron - Oh, I don't
know. I hope the best of our stories aren't over yet! At the same time, though
– there are so many other things I want to think about besides my love life,
and life is full enough without experiencing the kind of crisis or turning
point that might make her interested enough to stick her head back into our
lives.

Besides all
that, I'm a memoirist. If anybody's going to be telling our stories, it's going
to be me.

WF -Before you met Nik, what was your ideal man?

Aaron - Oh, that's
precious that you think I was even thinking that way back then.

Before Nik, I
wasn't really thinking about love or sex or partnership. I'm pretty sure I was
trying very hard not to think about them at all. If you had asked me that
question my freshman year in high school, I'm pretty sure I would have rolled
my eyes and asked you if you had any questions that were actually interesting;
I was something of a little shit. And I was still figuring out that I was gay,
but most of the boys surrounding me were not the type to inspire any kind of
moony-eyed dreaming. My friend Alex thinks that's why I was so set on leaving
home as soon as possible – she might be right. It's definitely true, at least,
that even for the first several months of knowing Nik, I wasn't thinking about
those things. I was a bit of a slow-starter, and we were so young.

WF -You’re going out for dinner. What’s your
favorite food?

Aaron - I really will
eat just about anything; I grew up with a single mother, and I learned to cook
on a pretty limited budget, and I've been a student for as long as I've been an
adult. If somebody else is picking up the check (why doesn't this happen to me
more often?) I'm going big – I want an actual steak, a proper slab of meat
that's meltingly tender and slathered in butter. There should also be a baked
potato and probably something green, also coated in butter. (This is probably
why people don't pick up the check more often, isn't it?)

1 comment:

Thanks so much for hosting me yesterday! I'm sorry I couldn't make it over here - I spent the day traveling to Austin and trying to make all of Aaron's culinary dreams come true - but I was really very tickled and pleased. Thank you so much!